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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26720770">red unseemly things</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxaucupe/pseuds/luxaucupe'>luxaucupe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wolf 359 (Radio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, M/M, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, and then doesnt wait for an answer, bet you'd thought youd seen the last of these fuckers well you guessed wrong, i will NEVER stop giving daniel jacobi problems and issues, warren kepler looks at jacobi says "anyone gonna ruin that"</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:14:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,497</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26720770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxaucupe/pseuds/luxaucupe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>you kissed him just to piss him off more. you kissed him just to make his lip bleed. that was the only way you’d ever land a scratch on him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Doug Eiffel/Daniel Jacobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>red unseemly things</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>wouldya look at that! me finally going back and using my old drafts!<br/>my typical jacobi-centric warnings for discussions of violent thoughts and alcohol mentions</p><p>today's song recs: sepia by indigo jam unit and databend by jack stauber</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“penny for your thoughts?” eiffel prods, because you’ve been sitting there for two damn hours picking all the sesame seeds off your burger. it’s been so long it’s gotten stale. <em> and </em>soggy. a stale, soggy hamburger with two bites out of it. you’re in love with it. it’s perfect. look at this fucking sesame-seedless hamburger. it’s incredible.</p><p>eiffel crosses his arms. does that little pout thing.“fffive dollars for your thoughts? i can’t go higher than five.”</p><p>this is performance art, what you’re doing right here. living sculpture. this is genius. you shoulda been an artist. you start putting the seeds back into their little sesame seed craters. revolutionary. avant-garde. œuvre d'art.</p><p>“alright. you’ve called my bluff. six-fifty for your thoughts. not a nickel more.” he actually pulls out his wallet. there’s definitely less than six dollars in there. maybe he’s part if this art installation you’re doing here. you stab at the patty with your plastic knife. the stale-soggy bun collapses under the hit like a cracked ribcage. ketchup goes everywhere. it’s pathetic.</p><p>“very… violent.” he says it with an art appraiser’s measured disinterest, a gentle construction of soulless approval.</p><p>yeah. yeah.</p><p>you set the cutlery down very slowly.</p><p>“sometimes i daydream about hurting people. mostly. mostly i daydream about hurting people. and i don’t mean specific people. i mean the feeling of it, the actual, physical feeling, not the emotion, just the sensation. i sit, y’know, i sit and i think—” </p><p>and you’re shooting your mouth off, now, more than you should be saying, and your watch is on backwards, so you take it off, and you put it back on the right way, </p><p>“—i mean, not always, but i think about clawing someone open and pooling the blood on my palms and letting it dry like everyone used to do with elmer’s glue as a little kid. and it’s not that i’m gonna do that, i’m not just gonna pick someone and stick my hand in their chest cavity, right? i wouldn’t just do that, that would be crazy, i don’t actually think about killing, not like <em> that</em>, it’s not about… do you ever daydream like that? just sit there, hands itching, thinking about how much damage you could cause,” you say, and from just the tiniest smidgen of the expression he fails to wipe from his face, you know, you <em> know, </em>that he doesn’t. no one ever does anymore.</p><p>“does killing spiders count?” he says with a trying smile and a glance at the little spider on the carpet beside your feet, and no, killing spiders does not count, and <em> no</em>, he doesn’t actually kill spiders at all, he just puts them in little paper cups and brings them outside and tells them to stay. stay put. stay out there. it’s safer there. there’s no daniel there, and daniel kills spiders.</p><p>you put your finger down cautiously on the ground and let the little thing find its way on up. it’s so light you don’t even feel it.</p><p>eyes trained on eiffel’s, you crush it between your fingers and wipe the teensy, tiny little guts on your jeans. he winces, and then he hides the wincing, and that, at least, is sweet. sweet people pretend they forgive you for not being sweet. sweet people make believe that they could ever love you when you’re daniel and Daniel Kills Spiders.</p><p>cry mercy. say uncle. it doesn’t matter which one of you does it. it’s surrender time. this war of attrition will end when you make it end, and there’s enough warm fuzzies left in your fluttery creature-heart to know and to fear you will escalate and escalate until you <em>win</em> this goddamn game of moral chicken, no cost too great. he wouldn’t be daintily wincing if you came home with broken knuckles. he would be mad, and it wouldn’t be at you, and that’s just the damnedest thing, ain’t it? it’d be a guilt thing. an “i love you but i don’t always love what you’re capable of” thing.</p><p>messy. messy kill. that’s what kepler woulda gotten angry about if you had shown up at his fire escape with flecks of strangers’ bone on your coat. messy kill, tracking the evidence in a conspicuous path behind you like a dying slug from salt. messy kill, ruining your pretty coat, ruining your pretty coat because you can explain away the gunpowder burns but not the flecks of brick red around the sleeves. he would be mad at <em> you. </em></p><p>you know what you thought when you first met him in the bar? this guy <em> gets </em> it. it was always a game to you, that whole human thing, a guessing game where you try to figure out how many layers of veneer you can let fall away before someone calls the cops. he was the first one that prompted you to guess <em> all of them. </em>and the worst part of it all? he died before you could shed enough layers to tell if you had been right.</p><p>you know what he thought when he first met you? remarkably little. he thought nothing of you, and for damn good reason. and then you talked. you talked and talked and talked. you’re better at holding your liquor than your tongue.</p><p>and then — y’know what he thought then? he thought, <em> my god, my god, i can make him understand. </em></p><p>he told you that. right to your face. told you ages later when you were drunk and he was angry, ‘cause angry meant you disappointed him, disappointment meant he knew you weren’t trying hard enough, and not trying hard enough meant that — well, meant that you kissed him. you kissed him just to piss him off more. you kissed him just to make his lip bleed. that was the only way you’d ever land a scratch on him.</p><p>he pushed you off of him, and you knew in that moment that you had lost, because he wasn’t angry anymore, and you were still wishing you were unconscious in the motel bathtub.</p><p>you swayed from the booze, and he licked the blood placidly from where it had beaded on his lips.</p><p>that was an “i don’t love you, but i love, my god, i <em> love </em> what you’re capable of” thing, and you liked it a hell of a lot more than whatever shtick eiffel’s trying to pull sitting on the floor beside the coffee table and watching you daydream red unseemly things.</p><p>eiffel’s here now, though, and he’s maybe half-convinced himself that he knows and loves you, and god, he’s sweet. he’s an angel. you rest your palm on his jaw, your face against the side of his neck, and he smells like himself and he’s warm like himself, he wraps his arms around you with his right hand above his left just like he always does. you could die like this. you could kill him like this.</p><p>“what’s the problem?” he asks quietly.</p><p>you sigh against his skin. you woulda married him, if this was twelve years ago and he’d had money. hell, you were even born the same year. if this were back in high school you woulda taken him aside at a house party and kissed him slow in front of his girlfriend. </p><p>“is this unconditional?” you do that thing, that thing where you point between the two of you. the universal symbol for “us”.</p><p>“is this…? of course it is. of course.”</p><p>“yeah,” you say quietly. “that’s the problem.”</p><p>he pauses, and he nods, and he pulls you back against him. “you getting bored of me already?” half-joking tone. <em> barely </em>joking tone.</p><p>“i don’t know if i can even feel bored anymore. everything is just. sorta. something.”</p><p>“everything’s just sorta something?”</p><p>“yeah.”</p><p>“hm.” his fingers tap on your back. “can i ask you something?”</p><p>“shoot.”</p><p>“do you love me?”</p><p>d. y… do you… </p><p>“i don’t remember being able to,” you muse lightly.</p><p>a brief moment, a pause where he maybe considers copping out. but no — a repeat. that wasn’t a real answer, and you know it, and <em> he </em> knows it. </p><p>“do you love me?”</p><p>“i’m not bored of you.”</p><p>
  <em> “do you love me?” </em>
</p><p>“i hope so.”</p><p>there it is. there’s the honesty.</p><p>he smiles — not the expectation there, but no complaint — he smiles, content, flops his head down on your shoulder, scrunches his nose at your hamburger art. </p><p>“how many ex-paramilitaries does it take to turn a coffee machine on?” he prompts.</p><p>“hopefully no more than two.”</p><p>he nods.</p><p>you nod.</p><p>he nods again. it’s a weird angle to be nodding at.</p><p>“you gonna get up and turn it on?”</p><p>“it’s one button.”</p><p>“so you should have no trouble pressing it.”</p><p>“but it’s way over there.”</p><p>you push him over. </p><p>“see, now it’s gonna be even harder to get up and make coffee,” he tells you from the floor, and you lay down beside him and feel for his brachial pulse. you really need to vacuum.</p><p>“shut up.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>as always, comments mean the world, and thanks!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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